State Racist Governmentality: a Foucaultian Discourse Theoretical Analysis of Finnish Immigration Policy
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This item was submitted to Loughborough University as a PhD thesis by the author and is made available in the Institutional Repository (https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/) under the following Creative Commons Licence conditions. For the full text of this licence, please go to: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ State Racist Governmentality: A Foucaultian Discourse Theoretical Analysis of Finnish Immigration Policy by Jarmila Rajas, MA Soc. Sc. Doctoral Thesis Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy of Loughborough University February 2014 © by Jarmila Rajas 2014 i ii “My religion is the Religion of Humanity. The ultimate aim of all activity should be the happiness of the human race.” William J. Robinson, Eugenics, Marriage and Birth Control (practical eugenics), 1917 iii Abstract The thesis analyses the Finnish immigration apparatus through a Foucaultian governmentality framework and critiques the way immigration has been problematized. The immigration apparatus, ranging from discourses to various administrative regulations and their rationalities, is examined through the Finnish Aliens’ Act, Schengen visa regulations, and Finnish Immigration Services’ implementation documentation as well as through the related governmental bills and reports and parliamentary discussions and committee statements between 1999 and 2010. The thesis argues that the governmentality of immigration is a socio-evolutionary governmentality that relies on largely taken-for- granted conceptualisations of how society needs to be governed. The thesis shows that immigration control cannot be understood solely through the discourses of nationalism, liberalism and multiculturalism, but that these discourses themselves need to be understood in the light of a state racist socio-evolutionary constellation of power/knowledge at the heart of liberal governmentality and its naturalism. In the first instance, this claim is supported by a discourse theoretical analysis of the functioning of power/knowledge in immigration-related discourses. Additionally, the claim is supported by contrasting the analysis of discourses and rationalities of governing with an analysis of technologies of governing, i.e. rules and regulations of immigration control. The thesis then questions the governmentality of the immigration apparatus through various epistemological tools of decentring. These tools highlight how a commonsensical ‘truth’ about immigration and its governing is produced through methods, such as utilising explanations relying on psychologism, historicism, naturalisation, market veridiction and universalism/particularism, which enable a silence and scarcity of meaning around the taken-for-granted modes of knowing immigration and its governing. Finally, this claim about state racist governmentality of immigration is evidenced by a comparison of the contemporary way of problematizing immigration with the way immigration was problematized by early American race hygienic immigration policies. This comparison insists that eugenics and social Darwinism should not be exceptionalised, but that their rationalities of governing should be evaluated in terms of the logic of ‘making live and letting die’ that they propose. The thesis concludes that unacknowledged and taken- for-granted modes of knowing the world in socio-evolutionary terms—and specifically in social Darwinist terms emphasizing social position as a measure of fitness and human worth and entailing an all- inclusive logic of racialisation—have an impact on contemporary liberal ways of governing immigration both in general and in Finland in, at the point at which we think how immigration should be governed so that it promotes the health and wealth of the population and defends it from degeneration. Keywords: Foucault – governmentality – immigration – social Darwinism – eugenics – liberalism iv Acknowledgements This thesis was completed with the financial support of the Department of Politics, History and International Relations at Loughborough University. I must also forward my gratitude to The Centre for Research on Ethnic Relations and Nationalism, CEREN at the Swedish School of Social Science at the University of Helsinki with whom I was able to spend a very fruitful year as a visiting researcher. I am ever grateful for the opportunity and the support these departments and their staff provided. During the prolonged project numerous people have offered their invaluable support in different ways and I would like to take the opportunity to thank them for this. First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor Professor Moya Lloyd who has been a mentor and a great role model. With pointed questions she has guided me through the course of this project persistently insisting that I find my own voice. At times she has had the wisdom to rein me in and other times to allow me the freedom to explore. Similarly I gratefully acknowledge the input by the numerous other members of PHIR intermittently involved in the supervision. I would also like to thank the other academics that along the way have contributed towards the completion of this thesis. Special thanks go to Professor Vesa Puuronen for the comments he made on the thesis as well as for his support and friendship. The same warm thanks are extended to Professor Mika Aaltola, Professor Jaana Vuori and Dr Miikka Pyykkönen for the comments on the thesis and the reassurance they provided. I would also like to express my gratitude to Dr. Sirpa Wrede, Dr Suvi Keskinen, Dr Pasi Saukkonen, Dr Louiza Odysseus and Professor Randy K. Lippert again for their guidance and encouragement along the way. Also, this thesis would never have been started or restarted had it not been for the rigorous training by Professor Helena Rytövuori-Apunen and the early encouragement by Professor David Campbell. Naturally thanks go to those friends who have stood by my side during this long process. Had it not been for the advice and/or concrete support of Jonna Siitarinen and Daniel Fothergill, Daniel Gowens and Achim Küpper, I probably never would have returned to academia. Without my friends Dr Anita Chaudhari, Dr Elena Georgiadou, Dr Martin Mik, Michiel van Ingen, Dr Gwendoly Windpassinger, Dr Matt Wilson, Ian Gwinn, Dr Oliver Daddow, Dr Hrushikesh Abhyankar and countless others in Loughborough, the experience never would have been as pleasant. I similarly cherish the peer support and friendship in Soc&Kom, and the Humanitarian World Politics project at the Finnish Institute for Foreign Affairs, especially Camilla Haavisto, Karin Creutz, Peter Holley and Saara Särmä. I am eternally indebted to Tiina and Matti Frick, Laura Nikula, Henna and Ville Vataja, Sinikka Rajas, Emilia Lampinen and Tuomas Nousiainen and Dr Terhi Partanen for all the concrete and emotional support they have selflessly given. This thesis is dedicated to you. v Table of Contents 1. Introduction .......................................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1. Why Finland and Why ‘Race’? ...................................................................................................................... 2 1.2. Why Governmentality and Biopolitics? ....................................................................................................... 10 1.3. Research Design: Research Material and Four Levels of Analysis ............................................................ 18 1.3.1. The Research Focus and the Research Material ................................................................................ 18 1.3.2. First Analytical Level: Discourses and Discourse Theory .................................................................... 21 1.3.3. Second Analytical Level: Games of Truth and the Strategies of Power/Knowledge ............................ 23 1.3.4. Third Analytical Level: Governmentality and the Apparatus of Immigration Control ............................ 24 1.3.5. Fourth Analytical Level: Problematizations and Eugenics ................................................................... 25 1.4. State Racist Governmentality ..................................................................................................................... 27 2. Liberal Governmentality and Power/Knowledge ................................................................................................ 32 2.1. Scientifically Sound Government ................................................................................................................ 33 2.2. Scientifically Sound Epistemological Vigilance ........................................................................................... 35 2.3. Liberal Governmentality .............................................................................................................................. 43 2.3.1. Biopolitical Governmentality, Science and Naturalism ........................................................................ 44 2.3.2. State Racist Governmentality, Racism and Social Darwinism ............................................................. 53 2.4. Power/Knowledge: Methods of Analysis ..................................................................................................... 61 3. Governmentalities of Immigration: Racialised Rationalities and Technologies of Segregation .......................... 69 3.1. Introducing Finnish Aliens’ Policy 1990 onwards .......................................................................................